
CIass^(8l 

Book 'W35.5 



GopyiightN". 



COJnfRlCHT DEPOSIT. 



LEONARD WOOD 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE WAR AFTER 
THE WAR 



JOHN LANE COMPANY, NEW YORK 




(The Sargent Portrait) 







LEONARD WOOD 

PROPHET OF PREPAREDNESS 



BY 

ISAAC F. MARCOSSON 

AUTHOR OF "the WAR AFTER THE WAR," ETC. 
CO-ACTHOR "CHARLES FROHUAN, UANAGER AND I£AN" 



"God give tis men. The time demands 
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and willing hearts." 

— J. G. Holland 



NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 

LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 

MCMXVII 






Copyright, 191 7, 
By The Ridgway Company 

Copyright, 1917, 
By John Lane Company 



h] 



iC 



MAR 31 i9l7 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 

New York, U. S. A. 






TO 

HOWARD D. WHEELER 

WHO MADE THIS BOOK POSSIBLE 



FOREWORD 



ONE day last summer I sat in the 
study of an English statesman 
discussing the war and the proba- 
bility of peace. The talk natu- 
rally turned to America and the part that 
she would or should play in the approach 
to a merciful cessation of the slaughter that 
was ravaging half the world. 

"It would be an everlasting glory to the 
United States if she could help to bring 
about an honourable and lasting peace," I 
remarked. 

"Yes," replied the Englishman, "but has 

she qualified herself for such a role?" 

"What do you mean?" I queried. 

"Simply this," he retorted, "and I say it 

with all respect. The United States is not 

eligible for the part of intermediary; first. 



8 Foreword 

because of her indifference to Belgium's 
tragedy, and second, by reason of the fact 
that no nation, however rich, can speak in 
international terms without armed or trained 
authority behind it." 

This little episode made me think. I found 
an echo of what this Englishman said 
wherever I went. I had gone abroad to study 
industrial and economic conditions with spe- 
cial reference to the business problems that 
would develop with peace. In England and 
France I found commercial resources being 
marshalled and aligned for a world trade 
war. 

As I listened to the unmistakable rumble 
of this prelude to bitter and bloodless battle 
I realised, sadly enough, how ill-equipped we 
were as a nation to meet the shock of a con- 
flict that would test all our resources and 
our readiness. What I saw and heard on 
that trip are set forth in *'The War after 
the War," which is a plea for a commercial 



Foreword 9 

preparedness that is full brother to the train- 
ing in arms. 

We are as defenceless with the one as with 
the other. When I sailed away, America was 
in the throes of a great campaign for 
adequate naval and military protection: I 
returned to find much of the agitation still 
in the stage of animated speech. The larger 
task of providing an adequate and trained 
citizenry — the real defensive bulwark of a 
nation — remained unaccomplished. Amid 
the ruins of devastated communities and in 
maimed and broken humanity I had seen the 
tragic toll that war exacts. 

I knew — as many others knew — that the 
surest preventative of this appalling waste 
lay in a National Service that had all the 
beneficent features of compulsory training 
without the taint of iron-handed and despotic 
militarism. 

The most efifective way of presenting any 
cause is in human terms, and, if possible, 



10 Foreword 



through the medium of a personality that ex- 
emplifies the larger principles involved. 
There was no need of extended search for a 
subject. General Wood literally incarnated 
both the letter and the spirit of preparedness. 
He is its Prophet and its Doer. The story 
of his life, therefore, is offered as a human 
document in evidence of the Great Cause to 
which he has dedicated his courage and his 
character. 

I. F. M. 
New York, 
January, 19 17. 



LEONARD WOOD 



Leonard Wood 
Prophet of Preparedness 



WE were not so many miles behind 
the front. As you Hstened you 
could hear the dull regular 
boom of the guns which meant 
death and destruction all along the far-flung 
battle line. Suddenly down the road 
streaked a grey service automobile. It 
stopped and out leaped a lean, sinewy kha- 
kied figure of a man with a tanned and clear- 
cut face. You did not need to look at the 
crown and stars on his sleeves to know that 
he was of colonel's rank. His very presence 
radiated authority and commanded respect. 
There was a firm hand-shake and the quiet 
cordial greeting of the British soldier. 

We spoke of many things that summer 
13 



14 Leonard Wood 

day somewhere in France, but principally 
War. We were in the presence of the great 
and compelling Thing that was making his- 
tory almost before our eyes. We talked, too, 
of America : her unpreparedness and apathy 
to all the lessons of the stupendous struggle: 
most of all about the men who would be 
needed for field leadership in case the grim 
thunderbolt struck us. 

''You've got one great soldier over there," 
said the Colonel. 

'Whom do you mean ?" I asked. 

"Why, General Leonard Wood, of 
course," was the answer. "He is what you 
Americans would call 'some soldier.' " 

I beamed with pride. Who wouldn't? 
This frank praise of an American General 
at a time when respect for our military pres- 
tige was at its lowest ebb in Europe was as 
refreshing as a cooling draught on a torrid 
day. Here was spontaneous tribute from 
the firing line and from a fighting man to a 



Prophet of Preparedness 15 

colleague who had been through the same 
grilling mill. And what the British Colonel 
said was echoed all up and down that flaming 
front where human worth is appraised at its 
real value. 

The United States, and for that matter a 
considerable part of the world, has heard a 
good deal of Leonard Wood. With the ex- 
ception of General George W. Goethals he 
has been the most conspicuous member of 
our military establishment since the Spanish- 
American War. The superficial story of 
this Soldier-Doctor who rose from obscure 
assistant surgeon to be a Major-General 
with an international reputation in the in- 
credibly short space of ten years, is almost 
as familiar to the average schoolboy as that 
of Christopher Columbus or Abraham Lin- 
coln. He is the shining example of what 
can be wrought out of the profession of 
arms. 

Though he has been Healer, Adminis- 



16 Leonard Wood 

trator, Builder, Diplomat, Statesman and 
Fighting Man, he occupies to-day a more 
noteworthy place before his countrymen per- 
haps than ever before. It lies in the fact 
that he is not only the symbol and instrument 
of the most significant force set in motion in 
this country since the fateful Sixties, but he 
is likewise its most effective and eloquent 
Voice. 

General Wood did not need the stimulus 
or spectacle of war-reddened Europe to real- 
ise his nation's need of adequate prepared- 
ness. All his life he has actually lived the 
creed of a necessary training to meet the 
contingency of conflict: he has literally in- 
carnated the Gospel of Fitness that is the 
insurance against it. 

A great vocal teacher need not necessarily 
be a great singer. It is merely a matter of 
knowing technique. But the man who 
preaches preparedness must practise what he 
preaches. Leonard Wood is the animate 



Prophet of Preparedness 17 

embodiment of all the preparation that he 
has so long urged upon the United States 
and which, in this pregnant hour of World 
History, has a meaning not to be ignored 
save at dreadful cost. 

It is a fortunate circumstance, therefore, 
that makes General Wood the principal 
spokesman for National Defence. He is a 
self-made Soldier who realises in achieve- 
ment and citizenship the fullest require- 
ments of fundamental democracy. Without 
being a militarist he stands for all that mil- 
itary authority represents: he is everything 
that National Service should teach and be- 
stow. The unadorned narrative of his public 
performance is the best argument that could 
be driven into the consciousness of the 
American people to emphasise the vital need 
of organised safeguard against the terror 
and tragedy that now beset Europe. 

Seldom in the lifetime of any soldier is it 
possible to encounter a career more crowded 



18 Leonard Wood 

with action, more romantic with adventure, 
more studded with constructive service than 
that of Leonard Wood. To the finest tradi- 
tion of martial exploit he brings the added 
laurel of civil administration — the highest 
exemplification that the soldier is builder 
and not destroyer. 

What manner of man is this who subdued 
the savage in treacherous jungle with the 
same ease that he faced and conquered dis- 
ease and disorder in congested and hostile 
city: who has proved in terms of regenerated 
communities that the pen and sterilizer in the 
hand of the soldier-statesman are as effec- 
tive and more enduring than the sword in 
the grip of the militant invader? 



II 

You are not long in reaching the 
first symbols in the formula of 
Wood success. Probe the begin- 
ning and you uncover at once the 
hall-mark of distinct Americanism, The 
man who planted the first outpost of our 
colonial empire is a direct descendant of that 
Mayflower contingent that formed the cor- 
ner-stone of the Republic. His father was a 
country doctor of the old school, a soldier of 
the Civil War, who Iprought cheer and relief 
to scores of homes in and about his home on 
Cape Cod. From him came the heritage of 
character and service. 

Leonard Wood spent his boyhood around 
Pocasset, within stone-throw of Buzzards 
Bay. He was a shy and silent lad: he did 
not build mud forts or lead his playmates in 

mimic warfare. But he did love the great 

19 



20 Leonard Wood 

open spaces — the tumult of wind and sea. 
No hardened sailor was more fearless on the 
storm-tossed waters. He could sail a boat 
anywhere. His first definite ambition was 
for the navy. 

But immediate family precedent proved 
stronger than inclination. The year 1880 
found him a student at the Harvard Medical 
School. He had no money, but with tutoring 
and a hard-won scholarship he worked his 
way through. When he was twenty- four he 
hung out his shingle in front of a little office 
on Staniford Street in Boston, a slum dis- 
trict where people were poor and pay pre- 
carious. Here was interesting work in 
plenty, but the call of the service was 
stronger. After a year of struggle he 
packed up his bag one day, went to New 
York and passed second in a class of fifty- 
nine that took the examination for surgeon 
in the army. 

There was no immediate vacancy in the 



Prophet of Preparedness 21 

commissioned ranks of the Medical Corps. 
In the Southwest, however, the campaign 
against the Apaches had just begun. Wood 
had been told that men were needed. When 
he was asked if he would be willing to enter 
the service as a contract surgeon he promptly 
replied : 

"Yes, if I can go West and see active serv- 
ice. 

"You will see all the service that you 
want," retorted his new chief with a smile. 

Wood found out during the next few 
years that this was no idle conversation. He 
was ordered to join General Crook at Fort 
Huachuca, Arizona, where an expedition un- 
der the then Captain Henry W. Lawton was 
about to start on the first leg of what became 
the memorable expedition after Geronimo 
and his Apaches, who had instituted a reign 
of lawlessness all along the border that ex- 
tended well into Mexico. 

Wood reached the post late in the after- 



22 Leonard Wood 

noon of a broiling Fourth of July when cow- 
punchers, frontiersmen and half-breeds 
were celebrating in reckless and noisy fash- 
ion. Thus his entrance into Western life 
reeked with gunpowder. His meeting with 
Lawton was typical of the time and place. 
That gallant fighter, who was as profane as 
he was soldierly, greeted the young New 
Englander in this fashion : 

"What in the hell are you doing in the 
army?'* 

"I want to get into the line if possible," 
was the reply. 

The answer appealed to Lawton, who 
said: 

"Come along and I will do what I can to 
help you." 

Something about the quiet and business- 
like manner of the young doctor appealed to 
the veteran, who gripped his new colleague 
by the hand and slapped him on the back. 
Now began a comradeship soon to be tested 



Prophet of Preparedness 23 

by fire in the most gruelling Indian chase 
that American history has ever recorded. 

Right here you get one of the striking 
reasons why Leonard Wood has accom- 
plished everything he set out to do. Most of 
the troops were mounted. The future gen- 
eral had not ridden horseback half a dozen 
times in his life. He drew the only unas- 
signed animal in the command. As the old 
sergeant remarked with a smile: ''A very 
special horse." 

Wood soon discovered why this horse had 
been unassigned. It was not only very vi- 
cious but was half broke, yet he conquered 
it. The first day he rode thirty-five miles 
through the roughest country in Arizona 
without a murmur or a sign of fatigue. For 
five days he averaged eighteen hours a day 
in the saddle and on foot. 

All that winter and until early the follow- 
ing year he was in the field, some time in 
camp, some time on one of many rapid 



24 Leonard Wood 

rushes after Indian raiders. In the late 
spring began the big chase of over 2,000 
miles, which ended in the capture of Gero- 
nimo. Before he had been on the war-path 
three months he was given command of the 
infantry, a small but picked force whose offi- 
cers had broken down. Meanwhile he had 
been commissioned Lieutenant. 

Wood's Indian campaign was an epic of 
the West. Part of the time it was waged in 
the fastnesses of Sonora and Chihuahua, the 
country to the west of that in which Villa hid 
when General Pershing's punitive force went 
after him. Pershing's troops had the advan- 
tage of motor transport and aerial courier 
service. The Apache country was rough and 
difficult even for the pack mule, and fre- 
quently this hardy animal could not be taken 
on some of the trails. 

During those terrible months Wood im- 
pressed his endurance. I mention it because 
henceforth his career was to be one continu- 



Prophet of Preparedness 25 

ous test of this quality. In the early months 
of the pursuit he made one hundred and 
thirty-six miles in thirty-six hours, half on 
foot and half on horseback. On one occa- 
sion he walked with his scouts all day, rode 
seventy miles that night with despatches, 
and the following morning again took his 
place in the marching column. Such hardi- 
hood amazed even the Indian scouts. It was 
the direct result, however, of his simple life 
and his old experience in hare and hound 
chases at school. On this expedition Wood 
proved his theory that a well-trained white 
man can endure more hardship than an In- 
dian. 

Thanks to the iron persistence of Wood 
and his associates, the last of the Apache 
raiders were run down and the wily battle- 
scarred old chief — long the Scourge of the 
Frontier — was brought back a captive, with 
the young surgeon, soon to wear stars on his 
shoulder straps, riding alongside his pony. 



26 Leonard Wood 

For special and gallant service rendered dur- 
ing this expedition Wood received the much- 
coveted Medal of Honor, the American Vic- 
toria Cross, bestowed only for conspicuous 
achievement. 

At the close of the Geronimo campaign 
General Miles selected Wood to command a 
small party of eight picked men sent out to 
capture or kill a party of hostiles who had 
escaped from the Geronimo band. For five 
months he was again in the mountains of 
Sonora on a hazardous undertaking that 
took him and his men over two thousand 
miles of the roughest country. 

Wood emerged from that raclcing Indian 
ordeal still unknown and merely a minor cog 
in the military machine. During the next 
ten years he had a variety of experience in 
which the quiet work of the surgeon joined 
with the courage and dash of the line officer. 
It included, among other things, saving the 



Prophet of Preparedness 27 

leg of General Miles when he was thrown 
from his horse in California and when all 
other surgeons insisted that amputation was 
necessary; a quick dash after the "Apache 
Kid" who was raiding certain sections of the 
Southwest, and a heliographic survey of 
wildest Arizona, which gave him the outdoor 
life he loved so well. 

While stationed in California he played 
football for exercise and became a crack per- 
former. During his two years at Fort 
McPherson in Georgia he continued this ac- 
tivity and is probably better known in some 
parts of the South for his football prowess 
than anything else. 

Early in the Nineties he was assigned to 
Washington. To army doctors as well as to 
others this is the National Morgue, the 
sanctuary of easy berths and official ease. 
But with Wood it was merely a step to that 
point in his life when his name and his deeds 



28 Leonard Wood 

would be woven into the larger legend of the 
nation. 

It is characteristic of the amazing adap- 
tability of the man that he fitted into the 
Capitol environment just as readily as he 
had made himself part and parcel of the 
care-free frontier existence. He ministered 
to the medical wants of the White House 
with the same skill that he had bound up the 
wounds of guerilla warfare in trail and pass. 

Administrations changed : Cleveland 
passed from power: McKinley sat in the 
Seat of State. Wood continued as a Pres- 
idential surgeon, and a close friendship 
sprang up between the one-time Ohio Major, 
whose term of office was to be marked by 
the first American war since the Rebellion, 
and the keen-eyed and dependable army doc- 
tor. 

Now came the meeting which almost more 
than any other helped to shape Wood's life. 
One night in 1896 he was invited to dine at 



Prophet of Preparedness 29 

the Lowndes house in Washington. Just be- 
fore the guests started in to dinner a sturdy, 
deep-chested, spectacled man entered the 
room with a smile on his animated face. In- 
stantly the host had him by the hand and, 
turning to the army surgeon who stood 
alongside, said: 

''Doctor Wood, I want you to meet Mr. 
Theodore Roosevelt." 

Their hands met: there was a really sin- 
cere ''delighted-to-meet-you" salutation, and 
a pair of remarkable men whose careers 
were to be closely entwined in action and 
history came together. 

That night Roosevelt and Wood walked 
home together. No two people ever had 
more in common. They were both Harvard 
graduates, strong, athletic and loved stren- 
uous sports : both had fought Indians in the 
West and they shared a common feeling 
about the inevitableness of the conflict with 
Spain that now brooded over the horizon of 



30 Leonard Wood 

peace. With the destruction of the Maine 
in Havana Harbor that horizon broke into 
flame and we came to grips with Spain. 

The hour of destiny for Roosevelt and 
Wood now struck. In the Hght of what hap- 
pened to them it is interesting to reflect upon 
it for a moment. For Rooseveh it meant the 
first step into the spotUght that was to play 
about him continuously ever after: for 
Wood it likewise created an opportunity 
which was to be swiftly and brilliantly cap- 
italised. 

To Wood in particular the war meant 
everything and for a reason not generally 
known. Shortly before the Maine episode 
the future organiser of the Rough Riders 
had definitely decided to abandon the army 
as a career and to try sheep-ranching in New 
Mexico. This step was dictated by the fact 
that promotion was slow and the field of 
action restricted. 

Having made up his mind to take this step, 



Prophet of Preparedness 31 

Wood was preparing to go West when the 
break with Spain dashed all thought of res- 
ignation from his mind. In this episode you 
get a near parallel with Grant, who had left 
the army and was engaged in prosaic mer- 
cantile pursuit when Sumter was fired on. 
He left his desk to save the Union. So, too, 
did Wood now turn to the task which was 
to give him the fling into fame. 

Roosevelt and Wood wanted to raise sep- 
arate regiments in their respective states of 
New York and Massachusetts. Amid the 
tangle of red tape, chaos and criminal lack of 
preparation which marked our military ac- 
tivities this was impossible. During those 
days Wood and his co-workers, clashing 
everywhere with incompetent officialdom, 
realised the fallacy of the soft-voiced con- 
tention, preached so glibly by prating paci- 
fists, that in the hour of dire emergency a 
million men would leap to arms between sun- 
rise and sunset. The millions were as ready 



32 Leonard Wood 

to leap then as they are now, but it is a long 
step between the most ardent patriotism and 
the all-essential training and equipment to 
make that patriotism effective and protec- 
tive. No wonder Wood resolved, even amid 
the distractions of those crowded hours, to 
dedicate himself to the doctrine of prepared- 
ness. He knows whereof he speaks. 

But to return to our narrative. Senator 
Warren had proposed the raising in the 
West of three regiments of mounted rifle- 
men, to be classed as cavalry and made up 
of men having special qualifications of 
marksmanship and horsemanship. Wood 
was regarded, so far as experience was con- 
cerned, as a product of the Western country 
and so was Roosevelt. Both were delighted 
with the Warren idea and keen to translate 
it into action. 

Roosevelt was offered the colonelcy of one 
of these regiments, but he declined on the 
ground that it needed a trained military man. 



Prophet of Preparedness 33 

He said that he would accept the lieutenant- 
colonelcy if Wood became colonel. Secre- 
tary of War Alger fell in with the plan, gave 
Wood a desk in his office and said to him : 

"Don't let me hear a word from you until 
your regiment is raised. When your requisi- 
tions and other papers are all ready bring 
them to me to sign." In ten minutes that 
much-abused man gave the necessary in- 
structions which led to the formation of the 
famous Rough Riders. 

Alger was accustomed to handling big 
business. Had his Bureau Chiefs risen to 
the opportunities he gave them the admin- 
istration of the War Office would have been 
highly successful. But they were paralysed 
at the thought of responsibility and threw it 
back on a man already overburdened. It 
was not the lack of capacity in the Secretary 
which tangled up the War Department, but 
lack of courage and initiative in his subor- 
dinates. They were afraid to take the oppor- 



34 JLeoiiard Wood 

tunity handed out to them. The quick or- 
ganisation of Wood's regiment shows what 
Alger could do when he had men willing to 
assume responsibility. 

The world is familiar with the picturesque 
page that the Rough Riders wrote into 
American history. But what it does not 
know is the way Wood equipped that re- 
markable command. It throws such light 
upon the method and character of the 
spokesman for National Service to-day that 
it is well worth explaining. It shows how 
resource and initiative triumphed over delay 
and unreadiness. 

If you had any contact with conditions at 
Washington shortly after the outbreak of 
the Spanish War, you would know that in- 
describable confusion prevailed. It is best, 
or should I say worst, revealed by the re- 
mark made by a certain high military officer 
to Wood. He said with much annoyance : 

''Here I had a magnificent system; my of- 



Prophet of Preparedness 35 

fice and department were in good working 
order and this damned war comes along and 
breaks it all up." 

Wood helped to smash it. He knew that 
to recruit and equip a regiment amid all that 
encircling chaos was well-nigh impossible. 
So he adopted the wholesale method, which 
likewise was the prepared method. He care- 
fully assembled in proper form every docu- 
ment that bore on his task. It included tele- 
grams to governors calling on them for 
troops : requisitions on arsenals for arms and 
ammunitions: orders on government depots 
for uniforms and supplies. A stroke of the 
pen would make every one of these papers an 
official document. When he had them all at 
hand (and they made a stack nearly a foot 
high), he approached the desk of the Secre- 
tary of War and said to Mr. Alger: 

"All that I now need to raise my regiment 
is your signature to these papers." 



36 Leonard Wood 

Beset as he was by incompetency and sloth 
Alger looked up surprised and startled. 

"Why," he said, "you have not only used 
my name but the President's as well. Still, 
it's all right. We need this kind of construc- 
tive insubordination now. If men would 
only do things instead of talking about them 
the army would soon be organised." 

That night the electric spark carried to 
Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and In- 
dian Territory the compact instructions that 
in five days made possible the organisation 
of the Rough Riders, and in twenty-one wit- 
nessed their actual mobilisation at San An- 
tonio, Texas. 

Let me give you a few reasons why this 
miracle was achieved. 

First take the matter of uniforms. Every 
army depot in the United States was in tur- 
moil to meet the unexpected demand for 
clothes. 



Prophet of Preparedness 37 

"We cannot supply your regiment," said 
the Quartermaster-General to Wood. 

''Then our men will wear the ordinary 
army brown canvas working clothes," was 
the instantaneous reply. And they did. 

Thus expediency was the mother of com- 
fort because they were far more serviceable 
in the tropical climate than the regulation 
blue. 

Then there was the matter of rifles. All 
the other volunteer regiments had to take 
the old-fashioned Springfield. Wood want- 
ed his men to have the army Krag and he 
got them. Why? Because he knew where 
they were, and how to get them. 

Still a third instance. Wood realised that 
his motley command of college men, cow- 
punchers, border marshals and Wall Street 
brokers could not learn how to use a sabre 
in a short time : he knew that the most effec- 
tive steel weapon for close fighting was the 
machete. Scarcely a thousand people in the 



38 Leonard Wood 

United States had ever heard of this imple- 
ment, yet Wood was able to equip his regi- 
ment with them for the reason that he had 
heard of a firm in Connecticut that was turn- 
ing them out for cutting Cuban cane and he 
requisitioned their product. Once more he 
was prepared. It is the Wood way which 
always finds a way. 



Ill 

WHEN the Rough Riders steamed 
out of Tampa Harbor on June 
13th, 1898, Leonard Wood was 
still practically unknown save 
to a small army circle and to official Wash- 
ington life. Less than a month later he had 
fought his way to a Brigadier-Generalship 
of volunteers : on July 19th he was Governor- 
General of the City of Santiago, and the 
smallest hamlet in the United States was fa- 
miliar with his doings. Before the year 
which marked the overthrow of Spanish do- 
minion in the West had passed he wore the 
sash of a Major-General. Never was mil- 
itary rise so rapid. The amazing thing 
about all this was that the young doctor who 
had achieved so much had not yet turned his 
thirty-eighth year. 

Wood the Soldier became Wood the Ad- 
39 



40 Leonard Wood 

ministrator. He faced a proposition that 
would have staggered most men. Siege- 
scarred and still reeling from assault, San- 
tiago was a charnel house. Thousands lay 
dead or dying: the streets reeked with filth: 
hunger vied with disease to complete the al- 
most utter prostration. More than this, 
prejudice, suspicion, habit — all the hideous 
aftermath of generations of despotic rule 
had to be combated. Yet Wood, ruling as 
benevolent dictator, brought order and clean- 
liness out of vileness and stagnation. 

His methods were a revelation. Accus- 
tomed to Spanish officials laden with lace and 
luxury, the spectacle of this quiet-voiced, 
eagle-eyed doctor-soldier who moved about 
fearless and unafraid, wearing a simple 
khaki uniform and never attended by more 
than one aide, was as great a shock as the 
war itself. He poked into filthy dungeons, 
dragged out political prisoners, held im- 
promptu courts in areaways, and sent unfor- 



Prophet of Preparedness 41 

tunates on their way rejoicing and calling 
him blessed. He fearlessly went into the 
yellow fever wards of the hospitals, and him- 
self tested whether inmates of insane asy- 
lums were or were not fit to remain behind 
iron bars. He paid the penalty of this defi- 
ance of death by having a very severe attack 
of yellow fever. He became lawmaker, 
judge, controller, teacher. He placated the 
most powerful and astute of clerical autocra- 
cies: established schools and hospitals and 
constructed roads and waterworks. In 
short, he made Santiago a fit place to live 
and work in. 

His courage won where diplomacy failed. 
Once an excited Cuban mob gathered in 
front of the Spanish Casino and threatened 
to storm it because some Spaniards were hid- 
ing upstairs. Armed only with a riding crop 
and attended by a single soldier, Wood 
walked straight into the crowd and dispersed 
it single-handed. Then he added in Spanish : 



42 Leonard Wood 

"The first man who tries to attack this place 
will be shot dead." In five minutes the street 
was as clear as if a pestilence had been an- 
nounced. 

And speaking of pestilence brings me to 
one great glory of the Wood regime. It was 
due to his inspiring leadership that the con- 
quering hand of science was laid on dread 
yellow fever. It was here that his old med- 
ical training was invaluable. It enabled him 
to appreciate and remedy conditions and, 
above all, to place a true value on Walter 
Reed's great work which proved that the 
plague was spread by mosquitoes. Wood 
authorised the historic experiments on hu- 
man beings which confirmed the Reed the- 
ory. Armed with the results of these re- 
searches Wood developed sanitary surveys 
and reforms until Cuba became one of the 
healthiest countries in the world. 

The world hardly yet realises the far- 
reaching value of Reed's work. It has made 



Prophet of Preparedness 43 

the Western tropics, hitherto the deathbed of 
the white race, the white man's country for 
all time. It has changed conditions, so far 
as the tropics are concerned, half way round 
the world. Reed's discovery made the build- 
ing of the Panama Canal possible. 

In Santiago Wood first carried out suc- 
cessfully an administrative policy which he 
once summed up to me in this unconventional 
fashion: "I insisted on letting the Cubans 
do their own rat-killing." By this he meant 
that he had always found it a good plan to 
let Greek fight Greek. For example, when 
he first went to Santiago the whole province 
was bandit-ridden. To have made American 
troopers kill them in cold blood would have 
created bad feeling, so he established a 
Rural Guard which made short shrift of 
their outlawed brethren. 

When the American flag flew at last over 
the whole of Cuba there was only one choice 
for Military Governor of the island and that 



44 Leonard Wood 

choice was Leonard Wood. One little inci- 
dent will show the man's attitude toward his 
responsibilities. When he went to Washing- 
ton to confer with Secretary of War Root 
he called to pay his respects to President 
McKinley, who said: 

"What can I do for you, General Wood ?" 
"Only this," was the reply : "give me your 
full support so long as you can trust me. 
When you cannot do this get rid of me." 

At Havana in the old Spanish palace he 
did for the whole island what he had done 
for Santiago. From Weyler's chair — Seat 
of Cuban Frightfulness — he made democ- 
racy grow where once a pitiless tyranny 
obtained. He reconstructed the judiciary, 
set up a far-reaching school system, reor- 
ganised finance and transportation, put sta- 
bility and integrity into commercial enter- 
prise and the fear of God and law into the 
heart of every man. He chaperoned the 
Cuban Constitutional Convention, and no 



Prophet of Preparedness 45 

phase of his regeneration of Cuba was more 
difficult or significant than his sponsorship 
for the Piatt Amendment, which restrains 
the infant Republic's borrowings, maintains 
her sanitary standards, and keeps her under 
the tutelage of Uncle Sam. 

In Elihu Root Wood found that measure 
of support which only a very great man can 
give. He backed up the Military Governor 
in every possible way just as a great chief 
should act toward an efficient and loyal sub- 
ordinate. 

The Spaniards and Cubans were living in 
friendship. So just had been the govern- 
ment, and so fair the treatment of all, that 
when Wood's family left, a Spanish mail 
steamer was held for a day in order that 
they might go on it. It was the first ship 
to pass under the Moro and salute the Cuban 
flag over the old fortress, where the flag of 
Spain had floated for nearly four hundred 



46 Leonard Wood 

years. In other words, the iron rule had 
been just to Spaniard and Cuban alike. 

When, on that sunny day in May, 1902, the 
American flag was hauled down in the Grand 
Plaza in Havana and General Wood for- 
mally turned over the island, whose rebirth 
he had attended, to its own people, now 
clean, free, and linked to the world's brother- 
hood of democracies, he had reached a point 
in his career at which many men would have 
been content to pause. With him, however, 
the goal of To-day is merely the stepping 
stone to the Effort of To-morrow. And To- 
morrow dawned full of thrill and movement. 



IV 

AFTER his retirement from Cuba 
General Wood was sent to Eu- 
rope to attend the German ma- 
noeuvres, where he first met the 
Kaiser, who conceived a strong attachment 
for the brilliant young American General, 
with whose exploits he was familiar. On 
this mission the American contingent, which 
included Generals Young and Corbin, frat- 
ernised with the English mission headed by 
Lord Roberts and comprising General John 
French and General Ian Hamilton, all of 
whom were to play such important and dra- 
matic parts in the Great War. 

When Wood returned to Washington he 
was a General without a job, but he was not 
to escape the unrest that had marked him 
for its own. He became the centre of the 

most sensational controversy that had stirred 

47 



48 JLeonard Wood 

the army in years. The way of it was this : 
While in Cuba Wood uncovered some dar- 
ing postal frauds, which involved among 
others E. G. Rathbone, Director-General of 
Post, who was convicted and sent to prison. 
Rathbone had been Senator Mark Hanna's 
handy man in Ohio. The President-Maker 
stood by his henchman. He gave Wood the 
choice of letting Rathbone out or having his 
nomination as Major-General in the regular 
army opposed in the Senate. Wood stood 
pat. Through Hanna Rathbone preferred a 
whole string of ridiculous, charges which 
were thoroughly aired and which had only 
one outcome — the triumphant vindication of 
the man who had added so much to the glory 
of American arms. 

Meanwhile Fate had registered again. 
The spectacled and strenuous personage 
whom Wood had met at the Lowndes dinner 
and who had followed him through the Cu- 
ban jungle under a rain of steel, had become 



Prophet of PreparedTiess 49 

President of the United States. Of course 
Roosevelt and Wood saw a great deal of 
each other. 

One afternoon they were fencing in the 
White House Library. During a brief rest 
Roosevelt said : 

"I have been wondering whom I could 
send to the Philippines. There is some rough 
and important work to be done out there." 

"Why not send me ?" asked Wood. 

"Bully!" responded Roosevelt. "Go over 
and see Root about it to-night." 

Wood was soon on his way to the Far 
East, going by way of the Suez Canal. At 
Rome he was received by the King of Italy: 
in Egypt he tarried for two weeks with his 
fellow regenerator Lord Cromer. That 
worker of Colonial Miracles is said to have 
once expressed the regret that he could not 
be succeeded by the type of man that Wood 
represented. 

It is characteristic of Wood that he drew 



50 Leonard Wood 

the most hazardous post in the Philippines. 
He was assigned to the command of the 
Military Department of Mindanao and was 
commissioned Governor of the Moro prov- 
ince, fiercest of all the island bailiwicks. 
While organised resistance in a large way to 
American rule had subsided, the area im- 
mediately under Wood's control was alive 
with sporadic fighting of the most vicious 
and difficult sort. 

But before he faced the steel of Moro bolo 
and sniper Wood went up against an ordeal 
in some respects more difficult. The fame 
of his sensational rise had preceded him to 
the Islands. The friend of three successive 
Presidents, it was natural that officers and 
men should have regarded him as a success- 
ful courtier who had advanced through in- 
fluence. Thus suspicion, even hostility, met 
him. 

But it did not last long. Wood out- 
marched, outsufifered and outfought the 



Prophet of Preparedness 51 

hardiest regular of his command. He sent 
no one where he would not and did not go 
himself. The merest contact with him dis- 
pelled doubt, while comradeship in trench 
and trail won blind loyalty and devotion. 

In that savage-ridden stronghold that he 
had come to rule Wood knew that the path 
to peace had to be cleaved with hand of iron. 
The Moros were the most bloodthirsty of the 
Filipino natives. In the back country among 
the mountains were merciless head hunters. 
The Moros had the fierce fanaticism of the 
Mohammedans: they regarded the white 
man and his institutions as intrusions to be 
put down by every device known to savage 
warfare. 

The Cuban jungle fighting was as a spring- 
time frolic compared with the guerilla war- 
fare of the Moro hills and swamps. Wood 
and his command were practically under 
arms for a year and a half and in the field 
most of the time. For months he was al- 



52 Leonard Wood 

most continuously under fire. Once in the 
Lake Lanao campaign his interpreter wan- 
dered from the trail into a bog and was in- 
stantly surrounded by Moro warriors. Al- 
ways ahead with his men, Wood dashed in 
to his rescue and found him with emptied 
revolvers. Meanwhile the savages leaped into 
a dugout and tried to escape. By this time 
several troopers came up, whereupon the 
General seized a rifle and coolly kneeling 
in the mud, emptied the magazine, killing a 
Moro with every shot. It was this kind of 
performance that made his men adore him. 
As you analyse Wood's exploits in the 
Philippines — and they bear directly on the 
great campaign that he is waging to-day — 
you discover that all that he achieved there, 
♦ as elsewhere, is simply the result of sys- 
tematic preparation and fitness to meet the 
emergency. More than once he blocked sav- 
age cunning with his knowledge and fore- 
sight, as the following incident shows : 



Prophet of Preparedness 53 

On one occasion Wood received a delega- 
tion of Mohammedan polygamists who had 
come to plead for their harems and justify 
slave-holding at the same time. The Sultan 
of Jolo, who sat crosslegged on his rug, spoke 
up: 

"The Prophet has said that a man may 
have many wives. It is so ordained in the 
Koran." 

"That IS quite true," replied General 
Wood. "I have read it there myself." All 
the Mohammedans looked up with pleasure 
and satisfaction. 

"But," continued the General, "the 
Prophet also says that 'a wise man will be 
content with one.' " 

There was nothing more to be said and 
the Moros left stunned into silence and obe- 
dience by what they believed to be the un- 
canny wizardry of the Big White Chief who 
was as wise as he was brave. 

No phase of General Wood's Philippine 



54 Leonard Wood 

campaign was more colourful than his con- 
quest of the Sultan of Sulu. That astute 
slave-holder and polygamist, entrenched be- 
hind stronghold and flanked by savage re- 
tainers, was a far more dangerous indi- 
vidual than he appeared to be in the comic 
opera that bore his name. But Wood broke 
his power and some of his savage practices. 
Nor was this performance without its ele- 
ment of humour. 

The Sultan had the power of life and death 
and exercised it so indiscriminately that the 
General deposed him as ruler of his princi- 
pality. He left him, however, as head of 
the Mohammedan Church. 

When the most accomplished lady-killer of 
the Far East heard that his suzerainty only 
existed in spiritual matters, he said to Wood : 

**But how about selecting wives when I 
see women who please me?" 

"All that is done away with," answered 
Wood. 



Prophet of Preparedness 55 

"Then," pleaded the Sultan, "what is the 
good of being a Sultan?" 

"That is for you, not me, to decide," was 
the answer. 

Under Wood's quiet but forceful dominion 
the Sultan accepted the situation, saw the 
evil of his ways, and became a constructive 
and useful influence throughout the province. 

The taming of the Moros was attended by 
one dramatic incident which once more 
brought Wood into the arena of fierce con- 
troversy. I cite it not so much as a part of 
this man's remarkable record in the Far East 
as because it discloses a characteristic which 
runs like gold through his makeup. The 
depredations of Moro pirates and slave deal- 
ers on the Island of Jolo made it necessary 
to use swift and stern measures. The out- 
laws took refuge in a huge crater on Mount 
Dajo. Colonel Duncan commanded the ex- 
pedition sent against them and General 
Wood went along with the column. The 



56 Leonard Wood 

night before the assault he slept on the 
ground with the men, using his saddle for a 
pillow. He scaled the hill during the action, 
but left the control of the troops to Duncan, 
desiring that he get full credit for the vic- 
tory. 

In this fight, as many people may recall, 
a number of native women were killed and 
the hue and cry, usually emanating from 
ignorance or misinformation, sprang up 
against Wood. He was labelled as a blood- 
thirsty monster. As a matter of fact in the 
engagement the women were armed as well 
as the men, and during the melee of battle 
it was impossible to distinguish sex. When 
the War Department cabled Wood asking 
for particulars he replied declaring his be- 
lief that American soldiers had not wan- 
tonly killed Moro women or children except 
unavoidably in close action. The important 
declaration in this message, however, that 
shows the real man and soldier behind it 



Prophet of Preparedness 57 



was : "I assume entire responsibility for the 
action of the troops in every particular." 

In this sentence you see the thing that 
bound his men to Wood with bonds of steel. 
He not only stood with them in the firing 
line but he fought their battles in camp and 
court. 

When General Wood left Mindanao to 
become Commander of the Department of 
the Philippines at Manila he left behind him 
a perpetual monument to his administrative 
genius. In less than three years he had con- 
verted a hotbed of fanatical revolt — seat of 
slavery and polygamy and rent with feudal 
warfare — into a land of order and plenty, 
with school houses where the little brown 
kiddies were taught out of books printed in 
Arabic characters, where women had ceased 
to be chattels and were beginning to com- 
mand the respect due their sex, where rev- 
enue succeeded ransom. Wood the Soldier 



58 Leonard Wood 

had again made good as Wood the Admin- 
istrator. 

At Manila he found himself in command 
of nearly twenty thousand troops committed 
to a purely military task. He revised the 
whole defensive scheme of the island and 
initiated the fight to shift the strategic base 
from Subig Bay to Manila Bay and eventu- 
ally succeeded. He likewise extended the 
defensive resources of the Department to the 
limit. Those were the days when the match 
was perilously near the powder train that 
would have let go the explosion with Japan 
and it required all the tact and diplomacy 
that were part of the Wood equipment to 
deal with the delicate situation. 

In developing the defensive side of the 
Army in the East Wood was once more the 
pioneer because he brought about a revolu- 
tion in bayonet practice. It was then re- 
garded as an absurd waste of effort. The 
European War, now raging, has proved that 



Prophet of Preparedness 59 

cold steel at close quarters is still a necessary 
if unpleasant feature of modern fighting. 

Wood journeyed home by way of the Far 
East and spent most of the summer in Switz- 
erland. During a very notable celebration 
of the Centennial of the historic Siege of 
Saragossa he again rendered a typical diplo- 
matic service. The United States sent a 
Mission to this demonstration headed by^ 
Wood. It was the first important social in- 
tercourse that the nations had had since the 
Spanish-American War. The cordial re- 
ception accorded our representatives, and es- 
pecially to Wood, was entirely due to his fair 
treatment of the Spaniards in Cuba. 

Before returning home Wood attended 
the German and French manoeuvres. At the 
latter he was greeted by Colonel Picquart, 
the one-time Minister of War, with this ex- 
traordinary salutation : 

"General Wood, I am especially glad to 
meet you. The first time I heard of you 



60 Leonard Wood 

I was in jail, where I read Richard Harding 
Davis' account of your Cuban campaign." 
Picquart referred to the time when he had 
paid so dearly for his loyalty to Captain 
Dreyfus. 

While Wood was in Cuba, Jules Cambon, 
one of France's greatest governors of Al- 
giers, then Ambassador to the United States, 
spent some time on the Island, and was much 
impressed with what was being done. 

During Wood's visit to France, at the end 
of the manoeuvre period which he had spent 
as an officer attached to the headquarters of 
one of the Army corps, he was presented to 
the president of the republic, and especially 
honoured by being made a grand officer of 
the Legion of Honour, a rank which seldom 
leaves France. 

At the termination of these manoeuvres 
General Wood was asked what he thought 
of the French Army and answered in terms 



Prophet of Preparedness 61 

which showed the character of his observa- 
tion. He said the French Army would be 
the surprise of Europe in the next war, and 
his prophecy has been fulfilled. 



V 

IN 1908 General Wood returned home to 
become Commander of the Department 
of the East, with headquarters at Gov- 
ernors Island, New York, oddly enough 
his first American command since those ob- 
scure Eighties when he led his hardy cavalry- 
men against the Apaches across the Mexican 
border. This post had a larger significance 
than merely recording his station as rank- 
ing general of the army. 

From a weather-beaten desk in the old 
wind-swept building on the ''Island," to mili- 
tary memory dear, where Hancock, Meade, 
McDowell, Miles, and other luminaries ruled 
the destinies of the Army of the East, Wood 
now launched the great Preparedness Drive. 
No panic patriotism stirred him on. Fresh 
from an experience in the Philippines that 

had proved to him how sensitive a thing in- 

62 



Prophet of Preparedness 63 

ternational relation is, he began to impress 
upon his countrymen the urgent need of mak- 
ing ready to meet the contingency of war 
whenever and wherever it came. 

Nor did he deal in theory. Glaring weak- 
nesses in the structure of national protection 
were uncovered. For one thing he insti- 
tuted the Massachusetts manoeuvres, the first 
extensive and uncontrolled field operations 
to be held in this country after the European 
plan. In this make-believe war, in which 
nearly fifteen thousand militiamen took part, 
he introduced the novelty of a water attack 
on Boston, using military transports as war- 
ships. 

General Wood here proved conclusively 
that coast defences, however powerful, are 
absolutely useless without a mobile army be- 
hind them. To use the epigrammatic speech 
of which he is master, "Coast defence is like 
a giant in armour with his feet shackled : he 
is only effective within the reach of his club." 



64 Leonard Wood 

Upon his retirement from the Department 
of the East Wood was sent as head of the 
American Mission to celebrate the Centenary 
of Independence of the Argentina. What 
might have been an ordinary official junket 
turned out to be a journey fraught with the 
utmost significance. At the head of the Ger- 
man Embassy was the battle-scarred old 
warrior Field Marshal Von der Goltz, for 
years military mentor of the Crown Prince, 
and who sought out at once the eminent 
young American General. They had many 
talks about national service. 

Back in his own Fatherland the Prussian 
chief had espoused the doctrine of compul- 
sory training which combined soldierly effi- 
ciency with an economic preparedness of 
the highest order. Germany had capitalised 
this combined schooling with an irresistible 
commercial advance that had planted the 
business flag of the empire wherever the 
trade winds blew. 



Prophet of Preparedness 65 

Wood came back to America more than 
ever impressed with the nationwide value of 
a national service that would embody all 
the virtues of the German plan without its 
stern and iron-handed militaristic features. 

Circumstances again gave him a weapon 
with which to wage a war to prepare for 
war, because no sooner had he landed on his 
native soil than he became Chief of Staff. 
The time was ripe for preparedness educa- 
tion. Already the spark that was to set Eu- 
rope aflame had flared up at Agadir. Wood 
knew as few men knew what was inevitable. 

All the while America slumbered. Like 
a Monstrous Ostrich she hid her head in the 
sands of fancied security, content with her 
aloofness. Wood set out to destroy the il- 
lusion of isolation. He predicted then, what 
Zeppelin and Submarine demonstrated later 
on to England and which was likewise ham- 
mered home to us so ruthlessly by the opera- 
tion of the U-53 along our own coast, that 



6Q Leonard Wood 

the reaches of the broad Atlantic are no 
longer a great national barrier to keep out 
the invader. He realised, too, what many 
others now understand in the light of the 
Great War, that the Monroe Doctrine may 
some day join that now famed Belgian 
Treaty in the historic category of violated 
"scraps of paper." 

As Chief of Staff, Wood emphasised that 
the bureaus are created for the supply of 
the Line, and not the Line for the bureaus, 
and during his time in the War Department 
this new conception, so far as that massive 
red tape ridden edifice is concerned, was con- 
spicuous and insistent. 

Wood became the inspired Preacher of 
Preparedness. He took for his text ''De- 
fenceless America" — his creed embodied the 
Swiss and Australian systems of national 
service. He pleaded for a systematic train- 
ing of boys during school life, to be followed 
by an intensive instruction between the ages 



Prophet of Preparedness 67 

of eighteen and twenty-one when business 
and domestic responsibility is at its minimum 
and physical resiliency and power are at their 
maximum. How was he to get this message 
home ? 

"Since the bulwark of a nation lies in a 
citizenry trained to arms," said Wood to 
himself, "this training must begin with 
youth. Why not give the high school and 
the college student an opportunity to mould 
the great idea of national defence into his 
mind along with academic studies?" 

Out of this came the inspiration for the 
Student Camps which really marked the first 
outposts of our preparedness scheme. With 
a fine eye for sentiment and tradition Gen- 
eral Wood held the first of these camps on 
Gettysburg Battlefield— the Valhalla of 
American Heroism. Here for the first time 
and in a big national way the youth of the 
land got its first test of soldier life. 

In these camps developed the nucleus of 



68 Leonard Wood 

the National Reserve Corps, whose shield 
bears the inscription: "Ready, Organised, 
Prepared," and whose motto is: "Striving 
for Peace but Ready for War." The Ad- 
visory Committee is composed of a group 
of University Presidents of the stamp of 
John G. Hibben of Princeton, Abbott Law- 
rence Lowell of Harvard, Arthur T. Hadley 
of Yale, Henry B. Hutchins of Michigan, 
Benjamin Ide Wheeler of California, Jacob 
G. Schurman of Cornell, Henry Sturgis 
Drinker of Lehigh, and John H. Finley, 
Commissioner of Education of New York 
State. Thus defence is woven into the very 
fabric of scholastic life. 

One concrete and heartening result of this 
agitation is a definite programme for mili- 
tary training for boys from sixteen to eigh- 
teen years of age in New York State under 
the direction of the State Military Training 
Commission. It carries out the provisions 
of a bill adopted by the Legislature during 



Prophet of Preparedness 69 

19 1 6 which put the Empire State in the van 
of this much-needed campaign of conserva- 
tion. 

The boys who attended the Student Camps 
Hked the training and discipline so well and 
talked about it with so much enthusiasm 
when they got home that their fathers and 
uncles and elder brothers began to apply for 
similar service. To meet this demand Gen- 
eral Wood evolved the now celebrated Platts- 
burg Idea which established Military Train- 
ing Camps for the systematic instruction of 
men to qualify as reserve officers in emer- 
gency. At the initial camp for men which 
gave the system its title the number of "rook- 
ies" leaped from twenty-five hundred in 1915 
to more than fifteen thousand in 19 16. 

The outbreak of the European War stimu- 
lated the Plattsburg movement. The hide- 
ous spectacle of Belgium sacrificed on the 
altar of inadequate preparation, of England 



70 Leonard Wood 

asleep at the very Crossroads of Destiny, 
brought home to America vividly and trag- 
ically the need of a defence v^hich Wood 
urged so eloquently. 



VI 

FROM Chief of Staff Wood passed 
once more to the Command of the 
Department of the East and with 
him travelled the fighting spirit for 
national defence. While he was in the throes 
of his campaign came the mobilisation of the 
State troops on the Mexican border. Under 
the Hay Bill, on which the President's sig- 
nature was still damp, the militia became 
Federalised. Seventy-two per cent, of the 
National Guardsmen of the country are 
in the Department of the East. General 
Wood's office at Governors Island became 
the nerve centre of a mighty movement. 

From a dozen states came clamorous ap- 
peals for supplies, equipment and transpor- 
tation. The emergency proved precisely 
what Wood had so long contended, for the 

71 



72 Leonard Wood 

demand exceeded the supply. Yet out of all 
this disorder he evolved system. 

He sat at his desk nineteen hours out of 
every twenty-four, galvanising inert Adju- 
tant-Generals and injecting dynamic force 
into all the hurried preparation. He ripped 
up red tape and sacrificed routine to action. 
If a regiment needed horses he bought them 
on his own responsibility; he was no respec- 
ter of pride or precedent. In short, he got 
results and got them quickly. 

This emergency revealed to the United 
States the sad and solemn fact that the in- 
adequacy in equipment which delayed a mere 
display of arms against a disorganised and 
revolution-ridden country like Mexico would 
mean nothing less than national disaster in 
the face of trouble with a first-class fighting 
foe. 

Here was fresh fuel to heap upon the fires 
of education that he was kindling every- 
where. From rostrum, pulpit and banquet 



Prophet of Preparedness 73 

table he sent up his fervent appeal. He 
proved to be as convincing an orator as he 
was governor and soldier. He adapted his 
message to school boys with the same force 
that he drove it into banking groups. A 
Twentieth Century Paul Revere, travelling 
in train and motor instead of horseback, he 
carried the warning of a peril that lurked be- 
yond the uncertain Frontiers of To-morrow. 

He revealed a gift of striking expression 
that was a revelation even to his oldest and 
closest associates. To the procrastinators, 
committed to the policy of drift in national 
preparedness, he hurled this impressive 
warning: 

''There are many things man cannot buy 
and one of them is Time. It takes time to 
organise and prepare. Time will only be 
found in periods of peace. Modern war 
gives no time for preparation. Its approach 
is that of the avalanche and not of the gla- 
cier. God has given us eyes to see, ears to 



74 Leonard Wood 

hear, and an intelligence and a memory to 
gather and hold something of the lessons of 
the past. If we fail to make use of these 
means of protection which have been given 
us and simply say because certain things are 
disagreeable that they are to be disregarded, 
if we make no adequate preparation and neg- 
lect the evidence of our senses, we can ex- 
pect help neither from God nor man. The 
fault is our own. 

"The western battle Hne of Europe illus- 
trates preparedness and unpreparedness. On 
one hand we have little Switzerland, every 
physically fit man trained to be a soldier if 
need be, and yet with almost no men living 
under arms ; a real democracy, the army the 
people and the people the army, so situated, 
it is true, as not to require a standing army 
or navy, but nevertheless so thoroughly pre- 
pared that she can put 230,000 men in the 
field in two days and follow with as many 
more in a week. 



Prophet of Preparedness 75 

"On the other end of the line, we have 
what was once a country, Belgium, with 
eight million people, commercial, busy, indus- 
trious, but neglecting almost wholly national 
preparedness. If Belgium had adopted the 
Swiss system, she could have put a million 
men on the short line which marks her east- 
ern frontier. Could she have done this, no 
one can foresee what the result would have 
been, but she was unprepared and overrun." 

Again, in defining the responsibilities of 
trained preparation, he said : 

"Our preparedness must be based first 
upon a moral organisation of the people, an 
organisation that will bring home to them 
an appreciation of the fact that with equality 
of opportunity goes equality of obligation, 
that the army of a democracy must be the 
people trained to arms to a reasonable ex- 
tent. In our case, with oversea possessions, 
we need a regular army adequate for the 
peace needs of the nation, such an army as 



76 Leonard Wood 

has been recommended by the General Staff, 
perhaps 250,000 men, of whom 60,000 will 
be in the Philippines, where we have taken 
up and partially completed one of the most 
splendid pieces of international uplift work 
ever attempted by any people ; in the Hawai- 
ian Islands, which are the key to the Pacific, 
for whoever holds them will dominate the 
trade routes of that ocean to a very large ex- 
tent (these islands are also one of the main 
defences of the Pacific Coast) ; in Panama, 
where we have built one of the greatest im- 
plements of commerce, the Panama Canal, 
connecting the two oceans. This canal is 
also of the greatest military value, making 
our fleet available on either ocean, and it 
must be strongly and securely held against 
all comers. 

"In Porto Rico and Alaska we must also 
maintain small garrisons. When the garri- 
sons are completed, they will probably num- 
ber about 60,000 men, so that the remaining 



Prophet of Preparedness 77 



force will be scattered in the coast defences 
of the United States and in our various mili- 
tary centres, serving as a training force in 
time of peace, always ready to meet a sud- 
den emergency, to furnish an expeditionary 
force such as we sent to Cuba in 1898, and, 
more recently, to Vera Cruz. This small nu- 
cleus of highly trained troops will serve as a 
teacher in time of peace and as a nucleus for 
a less thoroughly trained citizen army in 
time of war. We must have a first-class 
navy always ready and a National Guard 
that is national and not state, for the state 
system has been an absolute failure and al- 
ways will be. The federal government must 
control the guard in time of peace, and train 
it and equip it in order that it may be prompt- 
ly available and efficient in time of war." 

Nor will any one who has ever heard his 
kindling interpretation of the larger aspect 
of all this training forget its all-embracing 
scope. Here it is : 



78 Leonard Wood 

"We must remember, all of us, that this 
training is not a training for war alone; it 
really is a training for life, a training for 
citizenship in time of peace. It results in 
an all-round better citizen, because of the 
habits of regularity, promptness and thor- 
oughness which are acquired from the train- 
ing. The youth learns to respect the con- 
stituted authorities, the rights of others, the 
law, and the flag of his country, and to think 
in terms of the nation rather than in terms 
of the individual. Its result will be to nation- 
alise our people, to bring them together to an 
extent to which they have never been brought 
together before. For the everyday busi- 
ness and professional struggle, the training 
will be most helpful, because of the better 
physique, because of the discipline and self- 
control which will come from the training. 
It will result in greatly increased individual 
and national efficiency. It will make for 
national solidarity, and will be the strongest 



Prophet of Preparedness 79 

possible insurance against war. If war is 
forced upon us, it will tend to make it short, 
and to reduce the loss of life and treasure to 
a minimum. 

"We cannot, unfortunately, depend upon 
righteousness and an upright national life 
for protection. The best men who have ever 
lived have suffered martyrdom; blameless 
people have been ruthlessly swept aside. All 
this is unfortunate, but it is nevertheless 
true. We must organise the strength of 
right against the forces of wrong. We must 
remember that a strong man, armed, can be 
both righteous and self-restrained; that to 
have power does not necessarily mean to 
abuse it. We must remember, also, that it 
is the strong, well-prepared nation which, in 
the last analysis, decides whether resort is 
to be had to arbitration or to war. We must 
remember, finally, that it is better to be pre- 
pared for war and not have it, than to have 
war and not be prepared for it." 



80 Leonard Wood 

Directly as an outcome of all this persis- 
tent pleading came the heartening and na- 
tion-wide movement for adequate defence. 
General Wood had urged, among other 
things, a mobilisation of industrial resources. 
The stupendous struggle abroad has demon- 
strated that war to-day is as much a battle 
of chemist, metallurgist and manufacturer 
as it is of commander and soldier. 

The Naval Consulting Board, developed 
into useful and significant life by the ad- 
mirable initiative of Howard Coffin, is an 
excellent example of the fruits of the Wood 
Crusade. This organisation, which has made 
a survey of our industrial resources with a 
view of ascertaining their adaptability for 
war work, has assumed the dignity and pro- 
portion of a national defence body, with the 
authority of the President of the United 
States behind it. 

Such organisations as the National Secu- 
rity League, the American Defence Society 



Prophet of Preparedness 81 

and the Naval League — together with many- 
other kindred and allied organisations — all 
indicate that the idea has definitely and 
permanently taken root and will increase 
and multiply. 

Thanks to General Wood and the coura- 
geous and public-spirited men associated 
with him, there has been set up in this coun- 
try a Chautauqua of Patriotism which will be 
a Forum of Citizenship. 

We are on the way at last to a Prepared- 
ness which means security and safeguard 
for American Life and American Honour. 



VII 

You have now seen the Wood ca- 
reer flash by with all the dash and 
detail of a cinema play. So swift 
has been the panorama of action 
that there has been scant opportunity for 
close analysis of the Man behind the drama. 
I know of no better single sentence that 
sums up his character than a remark he once 
made to me. I asked him casually what had 
been the driving force behind all his achieve- 
ment, and quick as a flash he said: 

"Do things and don't talk about them." 
This is really the mainspring of the Wood 
machine. You find a further indication of 
his method and an additional reason why he 
has travelled so far in another pithy state- 
ment to which he gave utterance on the same 
occasion and which was: 

''Never miss an opportunity to do some- 
82 



Prophet of Preparedness 83 

thing. It is better to be a live failure than a 
dead success." 

The advice that he has always laid down 
for his officers is equally illuminating. Ask 
any one who has ever served with him what 
the headquarters maxim was and he will say 
that the Chief has invariably said: 

"Always volunteer for service because you 
never know where it will lead." 

Consciously or unconsciously, Wood, in 
this injunction, was merely talking out loud 
about himself. Back in those early Indian 
fighting days on the border it was Wood 
who always said, no matter what the emer- 
gency, "I'll go." If a horse thief was to be 
run down he was first in the saddle after 
him : if a courier had to be sent on a hazard- 
ous mission he was on the job ahead of all 
others. 

A good soldier is usually a good sports- 
man. Wood personified this rule to a re- 
markable degree. At the big ball for Presi- 



84 Leonard Wood 

4 

dent Palma and the New Congress at the 
Tacon Theatre in Havana, a night or two be- 
fore the transfer of authority to the Cuban 
Government — it was the night of the corona- 
tion of the King of Spain — Wood suggested 
to the Cubans that they go to the Spanish 
Club and propose the heahh and long life of 
the King, as they had been the winners of 
the war and could afford to take the first 
step in this last movement of reconciliation. 
They went. The Spaniards then came back 
into the old theatre and drank to the health 
of the new republic, and to the life and pros- 
perity of its president. It was the beginning 
of an era of good feeling between one-time 
bitter and relentless foes. 

In Cuba particularly Wood demonstrated 
his genius of conciliation in a multitude of 
ways. His attitude toward the Church is 
an illuminating example. It was a Catholic 
country, and under the system in force for 
centuries the Governor-General took part 



Prophet of Preparedness 85 

in all great religious festivities and cere- 
monials. Knowing its immense influence he 
made himself a part of all the important re- 
ligious ceremonies and marched in the great 
festival processions with the high dignitaries. 
So easy and natural was his adaptability 
that on more than one holiday he was greeted 
by this remark from the crowds: 

"Thank God, the General is a good Catho- 
lic." 

In view of his remarkable rise to rank 
and fame the charge has often been made 
that Leonard Wood is a Man of Opportunity. 
As a matter of fact when you dispassion- 
ately scrutinise his public performance you 
discover that Wood not only created every 
opportunity that sped him on, but, what was 
equally important, he was ready when it de- 
veloped. 

It is by contrast with other outstanding 
soldiers that you get the real range on Wood. 
With Kitchener, for example, he had an 



86 Leonard Wood 

amazing community of vision and achieve- 
ment. Physically, however, they were very 
much unlike because the English War Lord 
was tall, sinewy, slightly stooped, aloof and 
almost saturnine in expression, while Wood 
is shorter, with a stocky, athletic body and 
a face that can be alive with animation. 
Kitchener was a graduate of Woolwich, the 
English West Point, while Wood entered the 
army as a civilian and pounded his way up. 
With these differences, however, the dis- 
similarity ends. Indeed, as you place their 
careers side by side the points of mutual in- 
terest and contact are little short of un- 
canny. 

First and foremost each of them was 
equipped with the genius of organisation. 
Kitchener was the "Organiser of Victory" 
all the way from the Soudan down to that re- 
cent and fateful hour when he whipped the 
intrepid khakied host, otherwise known as 
''Kitchener's Army," into shape and hurled 



PropJiet of Preparedness 87 

it against the German battle-line. Wood, 
too, demonstrated an extraordinary execu- 
tive ability in field and office. 

Just as Kitchener delivered Egypt from a 
multitude of internal troubles, broke the 
yoke of an ancient tyranny and made her 
desert bloom with plenty, so did Wood over- 
come dirt and disease in Santiago and make 
the Moro morasses productive. Both men 
were great administrators, Kitchener in Sua- 
kim and London, Wood in Cuba and the 
Philippines. Both were strong-armed but 
far-seeing Conciliators, Kitchener with Arab 
and Boer, Wood with Spaniard and Fili- 
pino. They fought when fighting was neces- 
sary, but eventually found the larger way to 
lasting truce. Hope and Humanity grew 
wherever they wrought. 

"Thorough" was the word engraved upon 
the Kitchener coat-of-arms. By the same 
token ''Ready" might well be inscribed on 
the Wood escutcheon, for there has always 



88 Leonard Wood 

been definite method behind his movement: 
he has never left a job unfinished. 

Oddly enough both men made an almost 
complete round of service in the possessions 
of their respective countries. With the Hero 
of Khartoum the sun never set upon his 
colonial ministrations, which ranged from 
South Africa to India. Wood has left the 
impress of his personality in Cuba and the 
Philippines. 

Kitchener and Wood had the same lofty 
conception of military service as an essen- 
tial phase of national character. Likewise 
they were both master road builders. Each 
knew, and at the price of sweat and blood, 
the vital necessity of providing adequate 
highways in peace to meet the demands of 
war. Kitchener cut his teeth in this need 
first in Egypt and later in South Africa. 
It was *'K. of K." who built the railway 
from Sarras to Kosheh which enabled him 
to conquer the whole Dongola province and 



Prophet of Preparedness 89 



which he made one of the richest spots in the 
Nile basin : it was Wood who spread maca- 
dam up and down the tortuous Cuban ways 
and opened the island fastnesses to civilisa- 
tion and progress. 

Each of these strong men believed in ab- 
solute authority. They could use the iron 
hand when force was needed, yet the brass- 
buttoned despot could become the prince of 
peace. 

General Wood shares to-day a curious kin- 
ship with still another great English sddier, 
the late and always-to-be-lamented Lord 
Roberts. It was that gallant and unconquer- 
able little man who first exposed the unread- 
iness of his country to meet the war that he 
believed would eventually come. He ranged 
up and down the whole Kingdom urging Na- 
tional Service with all the power and effect- 
iveness at his command. He was met with 
indifference and even ridicule. His stirring 



90 Leonard Wood 

slogan, "Get Ready!" fell on deaf or doubt- 
ing ears. 

But when the German Avalanche crashed 
into civilisation and the Mailed Fist smote 
an innocent land, Great Britain found out 
to her sorrow and shame that old "Bobs" 
had been right after all. He died to the 
Requiem of the Great Guns for whose ex- 
istence he had begged. They came too late 
to save the peace of Europe, but to-day with 
every roar of their monstrous mouths they 
echo his plea. 

Will history repeat itself with Wood and 
everything that his Doctrine of Defence 
means? 

In the last analysis, all that General Wood 
has lived and preached and achieved is 
merely democracy translated into terms of 
civil and soldierly performance. He stands 
as the kindling dramatisation of the great 
and fundamental principle that with equality 
of opportunity under the flag must go a 



Prophet of Preparedness 91 



kindred obligation of service to protect that 
starry symbol of citizenship. 

Swollen with an inflated and temporary 
prosperity we are treading the path of delu- 
sion and folly. Each day brings us nearer 
the pitfall that lack of preparedness creates. 
Simple and abiding faith in the conscious- 
ness of undeveloped and untrained strength 
will not avail against the fury and force of 
organised assault. 

We point with pride to a colossal wealth 
and thrill with emotion over a trade author- 
ity that sweeps the Seven Seas, but all our 
treasure and resource are sterile without a 
dauntless national spirit expressed in trained 
preparedness to preserve peace and prevent 
war. As General Wood himself puts it: 
"We are drifting too perilously into indi- 
vidualism : we are not doing the things which 
make a people think in terms of the nation, 
and these are the things that we must do if 
that nation must endure." 



92 Leonard Wood 

This is the new Nationalism, whose high- 
est inspiration lies in a career like that of 
Leonard Wood. To know it is to hear a 
trumpet call to duty and service. 

It is Americanism itself. 



THE EJND 



